


always by your side

by onekisstotakewithme



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Marriage Proposal, OT3, Post-Canon, Send all royalties to Lin-Manuel Miranda, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 19:04:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20840480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onekisstotakewithme/pseuds/onekisstotakewithme
Summary: He lifts his glass in supplication to Charles and Donna, and grins, like they’re the only three people in the room. “To the bride and groom. May you always be satisfied.”





	always by your side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_raven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_raven/gifts).

> For Blue, and with good reason ♥

All told, it really is a beautiful wedding.

Hawkeye is more than a little drunk, and it must be obvious how he stares at Charles and Donna, both of them aglow in the bright lights of the ballroom and oblivious to everyone around them. 

He can’t help smiling, watching them laugh together, though the sound gets into his chest and echoes on forever in the emptiness.

There are cherry blossoms in Donna’s hair, and gold rings on their fingers that catch the flickering light of the candles on the table, and they are both so beautiful.

As he clears his throat, tapping a spoon against his glass, he tries for a smile.

He lifts his glass in supplication to Charles and Donna, and grins, like they’re the only three people in the room. “To the bride and groom. May you always be satisfied.”

A rousing cheer goes up, echoing off the marble columns, and the band starts playing again.

And nobody sees him slip out of the ballroom. 

He ends up outside on the balcony, relishing in the chilly spring air as he leans against the railing.

The lights of distant houses fade into pinpricks of light as tears well up in his eyes, and the lights blur into an unknown constellation, the kind that would point sailors home in the old days.

The kind that could point him home.

It feels like everyone will have someone to go home to tonight, save him. And it would be so easy to take his revenge, a beautiful Winchester cousin on his arm (even the hated cousin Alfred would work wonders), anything to ease the fire burning in him; but he doesn’t want revenge.

He just wants them. 

“Hey, Hawk.”

He doesn’t turn. “Didn’t your mom ever tell you not to sneak up on people?”

“No,” BJ says, leaning against the railing beside him. “Not that it matters. Getting pretty loud in there.”

“Mm.”

“The noise bugging you?” he asks frankly. “I know it’s hard-”

“I’m fine,” Hawkeye tells him. And he is, sort of. Maybe.

“I’ll be sure and let Peggy know. She’s prone to worrying.”

Hawkeye shoots him a knowing look. “Oh, it’s _ Peg _who’s worried about me, is it?”

“Hawk,” BJ says, amused, “why is it that you never believe that people could actually care about you?”

“Experience. And you’re full of shit, Beej.”

“Why?”

“Peg didn’t send you out here to check on me.”

“Sure she did. People _ do _care about you, you idiot.”

“_People_,” Hawkeye says, emphasizing the word, “have a tendency to run off and get married.”

There’s a brief moment of silence, where Hawk hears the bottom of his stomach drop.

He closes his eyes. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“Hawk-”

“Forget it, Beej,” Hawkeye says, “I’m skunked as a drunk.”

BJ places a warm hand on Hawk’s shoulder, heat bleeding through the thin tuxedo, and gives him a searching look. “Donna know?”

Hawkeye plays stupid. “Does Donna know _what_?”

“Does Donna know how you feel?”

“About the wedding?” Hawkeye asks. “Well, the chicken was a little rubbery but after tasting Igor’s salmonella piccata, it seems wrong to complain-”

“Hawkeye.”

“It was a beautiful wedding,” he says at last. “Satisfying.”

“Does Donna know you’re in love with her?”

Hawkeye laughs. 

It’s the only natural reaction to such a question. 

“Of course she does,” he says, wiping his eyes. “God, Beej, you think I’m subtle? Everyone knows.”

“Even Charles?”

“Even Charles.”

BJ frowns. “But you’re his best man.”

“He asked.” Hawkeye gives him a sad smile. “I couldn’t say no to him.”

“I don’t know if you’re a masochist, or they’re sadists, or both.”

“I’m definitely a masochist. Calm down, would you? You look like you’re about to hit something.”

“Or someone,” BJ says darkly. “They shouldn’t have asked you.”

“A little late for me to have pre-wedding jitters, isn’t it?” Hawk asks, and leans into BJ for just a second, savouring the closeness. “I’m fine, Beej. A little drunk, a little maudlin, and a little helpless, but fine.”

BJ rubs an affectionate hand over Hawkeye’s hair. “You’re not helpless, Hawk.”

He kisses Hawkeye’s temple and then goes back inside, back to a ballroom full of light, leaving Hawkeye alone in the dark.

And from the darkness swells up a memory of Carlye, of the happiness he could’ve had if he hadn’t let her go, hadn’t thrown away his shot for a good future.

“I told you I was fine, and I was lying,” he says to BJ’s retreating back. “Why didn’t you call me on it?”

There’s, predictably, no answer.

“Hello darling.”

This time he does turn around.

Donna is standing in the doorway, backlit by the light spilling through the doors and giving him a radiant smile, and she’s so beautiful, it breaks his heart. “Donna.”

“It’s only me, Hawkeye. Smoke if you’ve got ‘em.”

“Where’s that husband of yours?” Hawkeye asks, holding out a hand. “I hear he’s the jealous type.”

“Oh,” Donna says, waving a dismissive hand, before taking his offered one. “His sister commandeered him for a dance, and I’d be an idiot to try and get in the way of that.”

“I know what you mean,” Hawkeye agrees. “But it doesn’t mean I know why you’re out here.”

She laughs. “I wanted to dance with you.”

“Well, Mrs. Winchester, I’m _ aghast _ that you’re propositioning me. And you a married woman.”

“Stuff and nonsense. Besides, I was definitely not the only married woman in that ballroom who noticed you.”

“I distinctly recall toasting your union,” he warns, ignoring the way his heart has sudden roared back to life inside him. “I had to use the big toaster.”

“You’re a damn fool if you think this changes anything,” she tells him, patiently, but there’s a note of exasperation in her voice too.

“It changes everything,” he says in return. “_Everything_.”

“Horse hockey,” she says impatiently, and there’s a stubborn set to her jaw now, a gleam in her eye. “You are _wrong_, Hawkeye Pierce. You’re an idiot, and you’re wrong.”

“You really ought to write love poems.”

“You are _ ours_,” she tells him. “Even if you are an idiot.”

“And you’re shivering,” he replies, at a loss for anything else to say. “Here.”

He shrugs off his tuxedo jacket, draping it around her shoulders. 

“You’re a terrible flirt, you know,” she murmurs. “A big laugh, loud shirts, and a hopeless romantic to boot. How could any gal possibly resist that? Or any guy?”

He snorts. “Yeah?”

“Hawkeye,” she says, a little more softly. “I mean it. The first time I saw the two of you together, in camp, all I could think was how much I wanted that.”

“Charles, you mean.”

“No, you silly old bear. _ Both _ of you.” She squeezes his hand for emphasis. “You _ and _Charles.”

“You have the weirdest sense of humour,” he tells her. “Trying to give me to Charles as a wedding gift.”

“Ah, I’d wondered where you two had run off to!”

Hawkeye practically leaps away from Donna as Charles steps onto the balcony, bright and smiling and looking as though his time in Korea was nothing more than a bad dream.

“Charles.”

“Hello, Hawkeye.” Charles’s smile is shy. “I’ve been trying to catch your eye for several hours now, and I’ve got an uneasy feeling that you’ve been avoiding me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Charles, I’ve been avoiding both of you.”

“He’s being silly again,” Donna says, with a roll of her eyes. 

“Oh?” Charles asks, confused. 

“I’m not being _ silly_,” Hawkeye protests. “And trust me, I majored in silly. I’m just living in the real world.”

“As opposed to what, the land of Oz?”

“No, Charles, as opposed to your cozy little soap bubble just outside of reality.”

“Oh God,” Charles groans, as it clicks. “Not this interminable conversation _ again_. The matter was settled.”

“Don’t you think if we wanted you gone, we’d have told you?”

“No, I figured I’d wake up one morning and you’d have… left,” Hawkeye says in return, and they’re both giving him such looks of exasperated fondness that it hurts. “Look, there’s no possible way we can make this work, and we all know it. Why not just say ‘thanks for the good times’, and cut our losses _ before _we get hurt?”

Donna sighs. “Because you don’t _ know _that it won’t work. The sky is the limit, darling.”

“Besides which, however much it pains me to admit this, it would hurt more to lose you. We shan’t give up on you, Pierce. Hawkeye. In fact…”

He exchanges a meaningful look with Donna, who nods.

Charles fumbles in his pocket for something, and then smiles as he holds out a ring. 

“What the hell is that?” Hawkeye asks, amazed.

“It’s a ring,” Charles says, and instead of being smug, he just sounds nervous. “Do you not… like it?”

It’s a Harvard class ring, no doubt Charles’s.

“I love it,” Hawkeye says, looking at it. “But…”

“Oh!” Donna quickly undoes a chain from around her neck and pulls off a ring of her own. “Bryn Mawr, forty-two. All yours, darling.”

“I- I can’t take these,” Hawkeye says, looking between them helplessly. “I can’t.”

“Hawkeye, we want you by our side. No one else.”

“Forever, if you’ll allow it.”

“And what,” Hawkeye says, finding words at last. “What makes you so sure you wanna be stuck with me forever?”

“Your devil-may-care attitude?” Charles asks.

“Your charm?”

“You make us laugh.”

“You’re handsome.”

“And above all else,” Donna says quietly. “We love you, Hawkeye.”

“That is all we need to be sure.”

“But- but-” Hawkeye stutters. “You- We-”

“Hawkeye,” Charles says again. “That is all we need. _ You _are all we need.”

“I don’t know what to say,” he tells them, the words almost lost in the lump in his throat. 

“You could always put our minds at ease and say yes,” Charles tells him, and Hawk breathes a sigh of relief.

“Yes,” he says, and then he’s crushed between Donna and Charles, both of them wrapping their arms around him, cherry blossoms and champagne and that wavery laugh Charles does when he’s about to cry all floating in the air around them.

Donna kisses one cheek, Charles takes the other, and Hawkeye nearly dies on the spot. 

He’s crushed, exhilarated, _ satisfied. _

“Yes,” he says again. “I think I can live with that.”


End file.
